An outcry is raised against the distresses of literature as a tax upon the public, and against the sums of money and unrepaid loans which authors borrow of strangers or friends. It is not considered that but for authors we should still have been in the hands of tyrants, who rioted in the spoil of widows and orphans, and swept the fortunes of individuals and the wealth of provinces into their pouch. It will be time enough to be alarmed when the _Literary Fund_ has laid its iron grasp on fat abbey lands and portly monasteries for the poor brethren of the Muses, has establishments like those of the Franciscan and Dominican Friars for its hoary veterans or tender novices, and has laid half the property of the country under contribution. Authors are the _ideal_ class of the present day, who supply the brains of the community with ‘fancies and good-nights,’ as the priests did of old; and who cultivating no goodly vineyard of their own to satisfy the wants of the body, are sometimes entitled, besides their pittance, to ask the protection of taste or liberality. After all, the fees of Parnassus are trifling in comparison with the toll of Purgatory. LIV There are but few authors who should marry: they are already wedded to their studies and speculations. Those who are accustomed to the airy regions of poetry and romance, have a fanciful and peculiar standard of perfection of their own, to which realities can seldom come up; and disappointment, indifference, or disgust, is too often the result. Besides, their ideas and their intercourse with society make them fit for the highest matches. If an author, baulked of the goddess of his idolatry, marries an ignorant and narrow-minded person, they have no language in common: if she is a _bluestocking_, they do nothing but wrangle. Neither have most writers the means to maintain a wife and family without difficulty. They have chosen their part, the pursuit of the intellectual and abstracted; and should not attempt to force the world of reality into a union with it, like mixing gold with clay. In this respect, the Romish priests were perhaps wiser. ‘From every work they challenged _essoin_ for contemplation’s sake.’ Yet their celibacy was but a compromise with their sloth and supposed sanctity. We must not contradict the course of nature, after all. LV There is sometimes seen more natural ease and grace in a common gipsy-girl than in an English court-circle. To demand a reason why, is to ask why the strolling fortune-teller’s hair and eyes are black, or her face oval. LVI The greatest proof of pride is its being able to extinguish envy and jealousy. Vanity produces the latter effect on the continent. LVII